Pulp Fiction:the Crimefighters [Hardcover]

Otto Penzler (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 3, 2006

Harlan Coben introduces a selection of the greatest of the great from the golden age of pulp fiction. Here are 14 classic tales of virtue versus villainy that will keep you riveted to your seat. Legendary writers you've already heard of like Dashiell Hammet, Earle Stanley Gardner, Cornell Woolrich and Raymond Chandler are here. Legendary writers that you should have heard of like Frederick Nebel, Paul Cain, Carroll John Daly, George Harmon Coxe, Charles Booth, Leslie White, William Rollins, Norbert Davis, Horace McCoy and Thomas Walsh are also where they should be - with the greats. Tailor-made for both pulp novices and hard-boiled fans with a soft spot for the masters, this collection shows that some writing has an edge that time just can't dull.

Editorial Reviews

Review

'This collection shows that some writing has an edge that time just can't dull.' Yorkshire Evening Post 'Pulp fiction is a rich and glorious genre. Such is the intelligence of the selection that there's ne'r a dull piece here.' Good Book Guide --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

About the Author

Author of The Innocent, Just One Look, No Second Chance, Tell No One and Gone For Good, Harlan Coben has topped bestseller charts the world over, and is the first author ever to win all four major crime awards in the US. Otto Penzler is the founder of New York's Mysterious Bookshop and The Mysterious Press.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 576 pages
• Publisher: Quercus; Airport/Open Market ed edition (August 3, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1905204574
• ISBN-13: 978-1905204571
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,225,787 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Beware: collected in Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps, November 13, 2007

By 

Ken McDaniel - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Pulp Fiction (Paperback)

I have not purchased this book, but I have purchased its sister publication: Pulp Fiction: The Villains and was pleased with this British-published anthology. Unfortunately, I purchased and just received the Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps, published in USA; it includes all the stories in The Villains and has 2 other major sections entitled "The Dames" and "The Crimefighters". I believe the Crimefighters book is also included completely in the Black Lizard Big Book of Pulp. Also, the Black Lizard volume is printed in 2-column format(like the original pulps) with the original story illustration included. Unfortunately the Black Lizard book is printed on much cheaper paper with apparent smaller type face. The Black Lizard book has a tremendous amount of reading in it; it is a giant book.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Pulp Noir, June 16, 2007

By 

Stephen Dedman (Bayswater, WA Australia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Pulp Fiction (Paperback)

Editor Otto Penzler, Edgar-winning proprietor of The Mysterious Bookshop and founder of Mysterious Press, has picked out fourteen fast-paced and tightly-written tales (mostly from Black Mask magazine) from 1928 to 1942: an era of diamond-studded gangsters and glittering gun molls, a time long before political correctness.

There are tough private eyes a-plenty, armloads of femmes fatales (a surprisingly large number of them redheads), honest "harness bulls" and corrupt cops, criminal lawyers as well as virtuous ones, even an heroic newspaper photographer.

There's a Raymond Chandler Philip Marlowe story, `Red Wind', which alone is worth the price of the book. On a night when the Santa Ana is blowing and "Anything can happen. You can even get a full glass of beer at a cocktail lounge.", Chandler's world-weary knight-errant witnesses a murder in a bar, and finds himself trying to sort through the mess created by an over-ambitious blackmailer in a way that will spare the innocent.

It's a beautifully written short piece, not just for its dialogue and prose, but for its characterization, its wonderfully tight little plot, and Marlowe's personal code of honor.

Similar in tone, if less polished, is Erle Stanley Gardner's `Honest Money', the tale of a young attorney's first case. Ken Corning accepts the job of defending a woman arrested for bootlegging and attempted bribery. Almost instantly, he's visited by a cop from the liquor detail, then by the man who tells New York's mayor what to do.

Corning soon discovers what "the ring" is prepared to do to defend one of its own - and not in a courtroom. It's a cynical but oddly pleasing tale from the writer who'd later become famous as the creator of Perry Mason.

Even more darkly cynical is Cornell Woolrich's `Two Murders, One Crime', a story of a detective who realizes that the police and eyewitnesses have sent an innocent man to the gallows. When the real murderer is caught, too late, the D.A. refuses to prosecute for fear of making the system seem fallible. The detective refuses to accept this, and begins a campaign of psychological warfare against the murderer.

Leslie T. White's `The City of Hell!' also features crusading off-duty cops; it's much less subtle in its plot, characterization, police procedures and ethics, or prose style than Woolrich's (White used exclamation marks the way many modern writers use four-letter words), but it's undeniably action-packed and exciting.

`The Creeping Siamese' is a Continental Op story by Dashiell Hammett, written immediately before he started work on the superb Red Harvest. It begins with a man walking into Continental's offices and dropping dead on the floor, and doesn't slow down much after that.

While all of the stories are readable and entertaining, not all of them are gems. `Frost Rides Alone' is lightweight and rather disappointing, considering that it came from Horace McCoy, author of the brilliant (though very depressing) They Shoot Horses, Don't They? And Penzler admits to having chosen the closing piece, Carroll John Daly's `The Third Murderer' purely because of Daly's role in inventing the prototype of the hard-boiled, wise-cracking P.I. in 1923.

Penzler describes Daly rather unkindly as "truly a hack writer, devoid of literary pretension, aspiration and ability", but while `The Third Murderer' is perhaps the only story in the anthology that tends to ramble (at 136 pages, it's also by far the longest), it is also one of the few that tries to give the reader some insight into the villain and the femme fatale. Some of the twists may seem clichéd now, but that can happen when you're the pioneer in a field. It's an interesting story rather than a completely successful one, but I think Penzler was right to include it.

Pulp Fiction: The Crimefighters will not suit everyone's tastes. The world of the pulps was a simpler one, but that doesn't mean their simple answers were always good ones, and some readers may find some of these crimefighters difficult to warm to, or even tolerate.

If you dislike fiction by dead white males with few roles for women except as victims or vamps; if you're offended by stereotypes or epithets such as "good wop"; or even if you can't help giggling at the phrase "private dick", this book probably isn't for you. For fans of the genre and the era, though, it's a must-read. That's a lead-pipe cinch.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Old Style Classics, June 5, 2007

By 

James N Simpson (Gold Coast, QLD Australia) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Pulp Fiction (Paperback)

This collection foreworded by one of the most successful modern day writers Harlan Coben, presents big stories from a former era. Those interested in this book purely for the Coben angle may be disappointed if they don't understand the concept of this book by the fact that he has no story in here (his foreword barely scraped over a page as well). None of the stories inside were written after the 1930s but that doesn't mean they are not good. These are the stories where movies are made with a tough guy hero in a hat wearing a trench coat or suit. The stories are introduced by the editor Otto Penzler whose collections are always full of great stories. For modern day tale fans you can't go past his various author anthology titled Dangerous Women but he's proven with this book he can pick great stories from any era. Like any collection of various authors the quality will vary from story to story and some you'll enjoy more than others, but with 14 stories, even if you don't like a few, this book is still great value for money.

The stories and their authors inside are -
One, Two, Three by Paul Cain
The Creeping Siamese by Dashiell Hammett
Honest Money by Erle Stanley Gardner
Frost Rides Alone by Horace McCoy
Stag Party by Charles Booth
Double Check by Thomas Walsh
The City of Hell! By Leslie White
Red Wind by Raymond Chandler
Wise Guy by Frederick Nebel
Murder Picture by George Harmon Coxe
The Price of a Dime by Norbert Davis
Chicago Confetti by William Rollins Jr
Two Murders, One Crime Cornell Woolrich
The Third Murderer by Carroll John Daly